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MEPs back crackdown on aggressive cross-border tax schemes

Intermediaries required to provide information on aggressive, international tax plans

Information to be shared between member states

MEPs deplore lack of transparency over tax havens blacklist

Intermediaries promoting aggressive, cross-border tax schemes must report those plans to authorities, after MEPs gave their backing to new proposals on Thursday.

MEPs voted by 541 votes to 33 votes with 61 abstentions to back a proposal which would mean service providers who design or promote such plans, would have to provide details of their schemes in a central directory.

The disclosed information would then be made automatically available to national tax authorities in all member states.

Opaque blacklist of tax havens

The previous evening, MEPs debated another measure in the EU’s toolkit in the fight against money laundering, tax avoidance and evasion. During a debate on the EU blacklist of tax havens, MEPs from across the political divide deplored the lack of transparency surrounding the compilation of the list.

They said the lack of information about the criteria for adding a country to the list, and more importantly for its removal, had undermined the credibility of the blacklist.

The criticism followed a decision earlier this year by the Council of the EU to remove seven out of eighteen countries from the list of tax havens, a little over a month after the countries were first put on the list.

Quote:

“The European Parliament remains steadfast in its commitment to greater transparency and strong measures to tackle tax avoidance and evasion. When it comes to aggressive tax planning, public authorities must clean up the mess; they cannot limit themselves to the flow of new schemes, they have to tackle the stock.”